Chapter Two Hundred Thirty-Nine: Akata Wtich

I've read a couple of other books by Nnedi Okorafor, one for adults (Lagoon) and one for teens (The Shadow Speaker), so I was looking forward to reading Akata Witch, and it did not disappoint!  It definitely feels directed at younger teens, or even pre-teens (the main characters are all between 12 and 14 years old), but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  It has superficial similarities to Harry Potter--the protagonist, Sunny, discovers that she, unlike her parents or siblings, has magical abilities, and she joins a school where she learns more about these abilities and makes friends with similarly gifted children.  But it is not just a re-telling of Harry Potter that happens to be set in Nigeria.  Akata Witch draws on a variety of African traditions in its magical world-building, as well as offering depictions of current (more or less) life in Nigeria, and its plot and characters are pleasantly nuanced.  Some elements worked better for me than others--for example, I would've liked to see a little more questioning of tradition, though I loved how this book encourages readers to question the bias and perspective of any text they read, and the romantic subplots, though minor, felt utterly unnecessary, but on the whole, I enjoyed it and plan on reading the sequel, Akata Warrior. 

Chapter Two Hundred Thirty-Eight: The Library Book

I was so excited when it was finally my turn to borrow the e-audiobook of Susan Orlean's new non-fiction book about the Los Angeles Public Library, The Library Book.  It switches back and forth between a more general history (to the present day) of the LAPL and an account of the fire that mostly destroyed the Central Branch of the LAPL in 1986 and its aftermath.  While sometimes it was a little unclear about why the writing was switching from one of these threads to the other, all of the content was so fascinating that I was happy to just follow along.  As one might imagine with LA (and with a public library), there are plenty of interesting characters in the pages of this book!  I also appreciated that Orlean leaves her conclusions about the actual cause of the fire pretty open-ended.  She lays out her research, which goes beyond just what the investigation at the time concluded, but the only concrete conclusion she comes to is that we'll probably never be able to truly know the cause of the fire.  If you like libraries, or history, or you just want a great true story, try out The Library Book.